From Ernie Bot to Smartphones: Baidu's Latest Moves to Expand Its AI Ecosystem

Best known for its Alexa-style smart speaker, Baidu’s Xiaodu unit plans to launch a smartphone next week.

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As Xiaodu faces a shrinking handset market at home, the company aims to enhance its ecosystem of hardware devices with AI.

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An AI-powered chatbot, Ernie, was launched by Baidu in March of this year.

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Launched in March this year, Baidu’s ERNIE stands for "Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration.”

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At the beginning, the Ernie Bot was only accessible to a select group of users with invitation codes.

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Now the companies are allowed by Baidu’s cloud platform to integrate the bot into their products by submitting an application.

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A generative product, Ernie Bot, was introduced by Baidu based on its big Ernie family.

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Developing its AI capabilities for over 10 years, Baidu has developed an industrial-grade, knowledge-enhanced Big Model, ERNIE.

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ERNIE Bot is designed to facilitate intelligent transformation across various industries such as finance, energy, media, and public affairs.

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Human languages can be interpreted with accurate, logical, and fluent responses, almost on par with human beings, by ERNIE Bot.

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